How your Small Business can protect Against Cyberattacks

Small businesses have smaller budgets and fewer employees than their colleague at larger companies – but they face the same cybersecurity risks.

Threats such as phishing attacks and ransomware often have more of an impact on small businesses than they do on larger organizations. According to the National Cybersecurity Alliance, a quarter of small and medium businesses file for bankruptcy after a security breach, and 10 percent go out of business.

As such, small businesses have to address pretty serious questions to handle these risks. “How can we invest in stronger security solutions? Do we put our budget into fortifying our email software, or investing in endpoint security? What will help us spend our budget most strategically?”

Depending on the company, the answers to these questions will be different. But no matter the organization, there needs to be a solution for employees.

Employees at any given organization are usually not a part of security discussions. Workers are usually on the front lines when a security threat appears. The decisions these workers make in those key first moments determines if a threat become a breach.

Your team is essentially a human firewall, and if that firewall falls down because a user wasn’t taught to be wary of questionable links in suspicious emails that they went ahead and clicked – that click can undo a lot of the work your security team put into place to protect your organization.

There are tools that your business can use to help mitigate threats that your employees may unknowingly put you at risk of. For instance, using multi-factor authentication and a virtual private network (VPN) can help keep employees secure – even if they’re outside of the office.

Another important tip to help in the prevention of a security threat is proper training. By educating your employees on how to spot risk, you help protect against suspicious emails, link clicks or other schemes.

Building an effect training program is important to protect your organization from long term risk. When developing a program, keep in mind that what may work for a small business of 20, may not work from a business of 200 employees. Additionally, if your business is growing, what worked a year ago may not work present-day.

What it comes down to is what your employees are most engaged with and whether that strategy can scale. For some businesses, an amusing video that discusses ways to protect yourself might resonate more. For others, the use of an automated tool to send out phishing emails to coach employees on how to spot suspicious content might prove to be a more effective strategy. Either way, training shouldn’t be a one-time lesson. A 2020 study from the advanced computing association USENIX found that employees lose their attentiveness against phishing attempts after six months. This means that both new and existing employees should receive periodic refreshers on how to keep your organization safe.

Training is a crucial part of security awareness, but businesses also need to have procedures in place in case a threat still gets through.

For instance, bringing in outside organizations could serve as a useful tool to help you realize what you need to combat cyberattacks. Having outside assistance with things like penetration testing and technical assessments can help your organization discover gaps in your security infrastructure, which can also help you close them.

Story via BizTech Magazine